Nigel Evans: Antiretroviral drugs are rightly being made more affordable and generally more available, thanks to the support of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Education is vital important, and we should be focusing some of our attention on prevention. What discussions has the Minister held with his opposite numbers about ensuring that education is made available so that the message about how people can avoid getting HIV in the first place can be communicated, and particularly about trucking routes in some countries, such as India, and in Africa?

Michael Moore: Two months on from the end of the conflict, as hon. Members have pointed out, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains absolutely desperate. We all accept that we must take every measure to avoid aid's being diverted by Hamas to other ends, but the Secretary of State himself has expressed concerns about the Israeli Government, who are allowing through only about a fifth of the humanitarian assistance that the NGOs and others say they need. Is it not time that the Secretary of State spelled out what steps the Israelis must take to let that assistance in and what will happen if they do not do that? For the sake of the NGOs, will he spell out the difference between legitimate co-ordination with officials in Gaza and illegitimate engagement with Hamas?

William Hague: Well I now notice that the Government are too ashamed of the VAT cut to mention it in the list of what they did last November. Let us be absolutely clear about what the Governor of the Bank of England said yesterday. He said:
	"I think the fiscal position in the UK is not one where we could...engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion."
	For a Governor of the Bank of England to speak in that way, ahead of a Budget, is exceptional and extraordinary, especially when the Prime Minister was in the very act of proclaiming a fiscal stimulus before the European Parliament. It is a defining moment in the debate in this country about how to deal with the recession. Today, the right hon. and learned Lady speaks for the whole Government and the Chancellor is sitting alongside her. Do they agree with the Governor of the Bank of England? Yes or no?

Julian Brazier: Yesterday the Government announced their national security strategy. After the 7/7 bombings, the then Prime Minister made it clear that his highest single priority was the deportation of foreign terror suspects from this country. Can the right hon. and learned Lady tell the House how many foreign terror suspects have been deported?

Andrew Stunell: Can the right hon. and learned Lady ask the Prime Minister to reassure my constituents that when he recently met the President of the United States, he picked up some tips about getting back ill-gotten bonuses from overpaid bankers? Can she set out for the House the start date for doing so, or if not, at least the Prime Minister's timetable for beginning to think about it, or if all else fails, his aspirations for a miracle?

Cohabitation

Mary Creagh: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide certain protections for persons who live together as a couple or have lived together as a couple; and for connected purposes.
	In the summer of 2006, I met a woman in Wakefield who was homeless. My constituent and her 14-year-old daughter were both sleeping on sofas in the living room of a friend's one-bedroomed flat. The woman's long-term relationship had broken down. She had lived with her male partner for many years, brought up their child, and contributed to all household bills. However, when their relationship broke down, my constituent was entitled to nothing from her ex-partner. She moved out of the family home, to which she was unlikely to be entitled to a share unless she could prove to a court that there was a common intention of joint ownership, either by agreement or by financial contribution to the property. The courts could not consider what might be a fair outcome because she was not married. My constituent and her daughter were left destitute. She had discovered, in the hardest possible way, that there is no such thing as common law marriage. The burden of providing for her and her daughter fell on the state and the taxpayer.
	I was delighted to discover at the time that the Law Commission had published a consultation paper on cohabitation in May 2006. It produced its final report in July 2007, which stated:
	"The result of the current law's inadequacy is hardship for many cohabitants on separation, and as a consequence, their children... And in many cases relationship breakdown may lead to reliance on the State in the form of claims to welfare benefits and social housing".
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House told the House in October 2006 that legislation would be introduced in 2007 to give new legal rights to the 4 million people who live together. Those rights would also protect their 1.25 million dependent children—children who have no choice about their parents' living arrangements, but suffer devastating hardship on the breakdown of their parents' relationship. The old label for those children was illegitimate. Here and now, in the 21st century, they remain literally illegitimate—outside the law. In March 2009, here we are, still awaiting the Government's proposals.
	The case for reform was and remains clear. It is long overdue. In 2004, the General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion, which reaffirmed the centrality of marriage but also
	"recognises that there are issues of hardship and vulnerability for people whose relationships are not based on marriage which need to be addressed by the creation of new legal rights."
	There is an appetite for this Bill in both Houses, and the measure is largely based on the Law Commission's 2007 report. The wise, noble and learned Lord Lester of Herne Hill introduced the Bill in the other place on 13 March. It is supported by Resolution, an association of 5,500 family lawyers. Before publishing it, there was a public consultation, with nearly 200 responses from: the Law Society of England and Wales; the family division of the High Court; the Family Law Bar Association; Families Need Fathers; Refuge, and many other solicitors, academics and individuals. Lord Lester has placed their responses in the Lords Library.
	There is also an appetite for the Bill throughout the country. The 2008 British social attitudes survey stated that nearly nine out of 10 people think that a cohabiting partner should have some financial provision if the relationship has been long term and involves children.
	Our society has a duty to protect children, whatever family circumstances they find themselves in, but the law as it stands leaves children in poverty when their cohabiting parents' relationship ends. Today, one in three babies are born outside marriage, compared with just one in 20 in 1963, and 44 per cent. of all children in England and Wales are born to unmarried partners. The proportion of unmarried women who cohabited with a partner trebled between 1979 and 2002, but without a claim on the family home, the mother, who is usually the children's main carer, becomes homeless. If we are serious about our pledge to end child poverty in this country in the next 10 years, the Bill will have a huge part to play.
	However, we need to be clear. The Bill does not give cohabitants the same legal protections as marriage does. Marriage and civil partnership are special and offer specific protections and benefits. The Bill would create a legal framework that applies only on the breakdown of a cohabiting relationship. It may even remove the incentive to cohabit in order to avoid the financial costs of a divorce, which many people do now. The Bill would also allow couples to opt out of those protections to maintain their freedom of choice as individuals.
	People meet, they fall in love and they move in together. They may decide not to get married for a variety of reasons. There may be the romantic ideal of true love, and who are we in this place to argue with that? There is the ideological objection to the institution of marriage. People may have left an unhappy marriage and be reluctant to embark on another marriage, whether happy or unhappy, or they may have witnessed their parents' unhappy marriage and decided, for whatever reason, that marriage is not for them. People may feel too young or be too career minded, or they may be just trying things out with the other person. But they all have one thing in common: rare is the couple who consult a lawyer before they take the step of moving in together.
	There is, I have discovered, what sociologists call "optimism bias", whereby people believe that their love will last for ever—and in some cases, of course, it does. However, it is not surprising that people who are not lawyers should be ignorant of the law or that they may know the law, but allow inertia to creep in. However, the harsh reality is that men and women, whether gay or straight, who live together without a marriage or civil partnership can face devastating poverty and homelessness when their relationship ends.
	The Bill would also provide protection for Muslim women who may be married in a religious ceremony abroad, live with their husband in this country for many years and, on the breakdown of the marriage, discover that they were never legally married in this country and that they have no rights whatever.
	In July 2007, the Ministry of Justice concluded in its research paper on its "Living together" campaign that
	"There is a need for a presumptive scheme giving cohabitants (and particularly cohabitants with children) automatic rights and obligations...This is particularly important for those in uneven relationships or where one partner is less committed than the other."
	The Department also pressed for a more consistent message from the Government and policy makers on the non-existence of common-law marriage, saying:
	"Currently, the contrast between the acknowledgement of cohabitation in welfare support systems and the lack of acknowledgement of it in family law is contributing to general confusion about the legal position of cohabitants."
	The Department for Work and Pensions recognises cohabitation when establishing people's benefit claims. It takes into account the duration of the relationship, the performance of household duties and the degree of mutual commitment. Yet when one partner dies, the cohabitant has no right to a bereavement grant, as they are not treated as the other's next of kin. Currently, therefore, cohabitants have all the responsibilities but none of the rights that marriage bestows. Other Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, give protections to cohabiting couples without detriment to marriage.
	The law as it stands is unfair, uncertain and illogical. It penalises the vulnerable and, in particular, the children of cohabitants. The law does not recognise the choices that people make in the 21st century and it does not promote equality of outcomes for families. The Bill is long overdue, humane and compassionate. It promotes fairness social justice and equality before the law, and I commend it to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Mary Creagh, Hilary Armstrong, Liz Blackman, Natascha Engel, Ms Sally Keeble, Fiona Mactaggart, Lynda Waltho, Mr. Andy Slaughter, Dr. Evan Harris, John Bercow and Mr. Gordon Marsden present the Bill.
	Mary Creagh accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July  and  to be printed (Bill 81)

William Hague: I beg to move,
	That this House welcomes the Prime Minister's announcement of 18 December 2008 that a fundamental change in the British forces' mission in Iraq will occur by 31 May 2009 at the latest and that at that point the rapid withdrawal of the British troops will take place, taking the total from just under 4,100 to under 400 by 31 July 2009; notes that following this announcement there remains no reasonable impediment to announcing an inquiry on the war in Iraq; and calls for such an inquiry to be conducted by an independent committee of privy counsellors, and to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq, and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and its aftermath, and to make recommendations on lessons to be drawn for the future.
	This is, Mr. Speaker, the third time in this Parliament that I have put forward this motion—or something very similar to it—and it is the fourth time that the House has debated the need for a full-scale and wide-ranging inquiry into the origins and conduct of the war in Iraq. It will come as no surprise to anyone that with the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq now imminent and the political and security situation in that country substantially improved in recent times, we are once again returning to this issue a year to the day since we last did so and six years this week since the start of the conflict.
	Although it is therefore now a familiar topic for the House, the content of our debate today may be somewhat different from that in previous years, for we are now approaching a new situation in which Government arguments against an inquiry, which have grown steadily thinner as these debates have gone by, have now all but evaporated. In previous years, we made the argument that an inquiry should be commenced irrespective of the circumstances prevailing at the time, but now even those circumstances no longer provide the excuse for not commencing it.
	This is not to say that we have been wasting our breath entirely in previous debates, for in each debate the common ground in the House has grown larger as the arguments against an inquiry have been diminished by the passage of time. It is now common ground, I think, that the events surrounding the Iraq war have been so important in shaping world affairs in recent years, made such an impact on the lives of millions, involved our armed forces in such effort and sacrifice, been so fraught with accusations of mistakes made and planning inadequately done and become so relevant to what is happening elsewhere in Afghanistan or to what might happen in other places in the future that it would be inconceivable to turn our minds for ever against inquiring into those events and trying to learn from them.

Angus MacNeil: The right hon. Gentleman makes reference to the passage of time. He will, of course, be aware that the passage of time since March 2003 is equivalent to or greater than that of world war two.

William Hague: That is absolutely right, and it is a point that I have made in at least one of the previous debates, and the hon. Gentleman may have made it, too. Yes, it is now six years since the start of the conflict, which is longer than the duration of the entire second world war.
	Faced with enormity of these issues and the extent of public expectation that an inquiry will be held, the Government have long since given up the argument that no inquiry may be necessary at all, although it was their starting-point in 2006, when this series of debates began—a debate that was actually launched by the nationalist parties. At that time, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), who was Foreign Secretary, was very careful not to commit the Government to an inquiry at all, saying that
	"this is not the time for making these decisions."
	She also said:
	"Unlike at the time of the Falklands war we now have a framework of Select Committees that carry out independent inquiries."—[ Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 172.]
	True enough, that careful stonewalling was breached within minutes of the end of that debate by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), who was Secretary of State for Defence. He went out to St. Stephen's entrance and said:
	"When the time is right, of course there will be such an inquiry".
	Government sources then said that he had made a "slip of the tongue". However, it was not many months—16 May 2007—before the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), showing early on in the Labour party's deputy leadership election the skill that she is now employing in the leadership manoeuvring, said:
	"I think that when the troops do finally come home, which we all hope will be as soon as possible, there will need to be an inquiry and I think that we also need to look at the circumstances in which we went in but at the planning and preparation for the aftermath as well, and we will need to learn lessons from that."
	By the time that we returned to the issue on the Floor of the House in June 2007, the ministerial resistance to the idea that an inquiry might be necessary had totally collapsed.

William Hague: I do not think that those on the Government Benches now take enormous pride in the Government's position. Indeed, the variants on this motion that I have tabled in recent years were defeated only by quite narrow majorities, given the balance of parties in the House. I am sure that a huge number of Labour Members want an inquiry to commence, and commence now, as I shall come to argue.
	To be fair to the then Foreign Secretary, in 2007, she made the further and more substantial argument that
	"while our troops remained actively engaged and facing real danger in Iraq, it would be wrong to launch such an inquiry."—[ Official Report, 11 June 2007; Vol. 461 c. 539-45.]
	Many of us in the House have never agreed with that particular line of argument. Those of us who talk regularly to members of our armed forces, as I do at Catterick garrison in my constituency, have formed a clear view that most of them would welcome an inquiry at any time, since they, above all, are the people who have had to wrestle with the consequences of mistakes that have been made and are extremely interested in ensuring that such mistakes are not repeated. Their morale would be raised, rather than lowered, by knowing that an appropriate inquiry was going on.
	There is the further consideration that in an extended conflict—as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) said, the Iraq war has gone on for longer than either of the world wars of the 20th century—waiting for the end of all hostilities before learning from any mistakes is a grievous error. Our predecessors in the House launched an inquiry into the Dardanelles campaign while the first world war was raging, and indeed into events in Mesopotamia in 1916 while military operations continued there. Nevertheless, that was an argument until, in the course of last year, our troops were no longer actively engaged on a daily or large-scale basis.
	At that point, the Government's defence against starting an inquiry changed again and was redefined on 10 December last year by the current Foreign Secretary, who said that
	"we do support an inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war, when our troops are safely home."
	So, the mantra that an inquiry could not begin while our troops remained actively engaged has turned out not to represent the real reason why the Government would not set up an inquiry in recent years; it was simply one of a number of excuses, and its ceasing to be relevant has led them to abandon it in favour of another, much weaker excuse.
	Even now, it seems that the Government have to be dragged slowly to the course of action that they know is right and inevitable. The Foreign Secretary said, also on 10 December:
	"We are not going to hide behind the idea that the last troop must have come home".—[ Official Report, 10 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 565-6.]
	but given their record of steady retreats from one excuse to another, it would not now be surprising if they tried to hide behind that.

William Hague: What I am saying may be relevant to that. We do not know what an inquiry will say. However, I think that there are grounds for concern about the way in which Government have made important decisions about national security in recent years. Certainly, it appears from recent deliberations about Afghanistan that several different reviews are in progress in Whitehall at one time—some within different Departments, some between officials of Departments, and some between Ministers, including the Foreign Secretary—rather than the issue being looked at as a coherent whole. That may well be one of the lessons to be learnt for the future.

Tobias Ellwood: Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating 7th Armoured Brigade, who did a fantastic job in moving into Basra during the invasion and creating a relative peace? What happened then was that they looked over their shoulders expecting some form of stabilisation and reconstruction plan, and there was none to be seen. Is not the reason why we require an inquiry the fact that other Departments, especially the Department for International Development, were not there in strength to support the good work that our military had done?

William Hague: I think that it is important for it to be a Privy Council inquiry because the results of that inquiry would be laid before Parliament. The hon. Gentleman and I have had a small difference on this matter in the past, in that he originally proposed a reinforced and special Committee of this House. That would suffer the disadvantages that its membership would comprise only Members of this House, and that it would probably have to have a governing party majority, so it would not be the independent inquiry that I am advocating, able to draw on the expertise of people from outside Parliament. I do not think this needs to be an inquiry conducted in Parliament, but its results need to be laid before Parliament.

Edward Leigh: Does my right hon. Friend share my sadness at the fact that the reason why we need a full Falklands-type inquiry is because our Select Committees are so weak? Under the Osmotherly rules, we cannot insist on particular officials appearing before a Committee and we cannot look at advice given to Ministers, and our Select Committees are therefore not strong enough, unlike congressional committees.

Edward Leigh: I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way. So can he give a commitment today that we will set up this inquiry as soon as practicable after 31 July? That is a given, is it?

Tobias Ellwood: The Foreign Secretary seems to be living in a parallel world in terms of what is actually happening with our troops at Basra airport. They are not going out on patrols, and they are not involved in operations in Basra. They are bunkered up at the airport itself. They are doing some work with the Iraqi army, but in fact they are busy handing over not to the Iraqis, but to the Americans. So can he spell out exactly what he is trying to justify by saying in his amendment that we are involved in operations when we are not?

David Miliband: I am afraid that that is just not correct, and I am happy to go through the reasons why it is not correct. One obvious reason is that they are not simply providing training, but they are providing mentoring, and mentoring for Iraqi troops by definition involves more than going outside—

Mike Hancock: I am sure that the whole House shares the Foreign Secretary's admiration for those who have served and are serving in Iraq. He very much admires their courage, so why are the Government not showing the same amount of courage and saying "We have nothing to hide, we are not hiding behind anything and we agree to this inquiry"? Why are they not being as courageous as our soldiers have been?

Bob Spink: I sincerely thank the Foreign Secretary for recognising in his speech and in the Government amendment the professionalism and bravery of our troops, something that the Opposition failed to do in their motion. Will he confirm that any inquiry will not reveal the identity of any individual member of the troops so that nobody is put at risk?

David Miliband: I have not mapped that out, but it would be a substantial number. In the Foreign Office, it would involve people who are working in our Iraq unit at present who are resolutely focused on this delicate passage of time. As British troops withdraw, we have to make it clear to the people of Basra that we are not abandoning Iraq, but are continuing to remain engaged with it. I am happy to confirm that substantial effort will be dedicated to an inquiry. It would be important for the Government to co-operate fully with it across Departments.
	I do not accept that development and planning have been compromised by the absence of an inquiry. There have already been four inquiries into aspects of the war in Iraq, although they were not official inquiries with access to all the papers. In 2003, both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, and then a year later the Butler inquiry, examined the decision to invade Iraq, focusing on the accuracy and adequacy of the intelligence, and of course the Hutton inquiry looked into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly.
	Our military, diplomatic and development strategies have consistently been adjusted and updated in the light of events and those inquiries, and in the light of reviews that we have undertaken inside the Government. Some of them have been made public, but others, for obvious reasons, have not. For instance, the Ministry of Defence carries out regular reviews of operations from the strategic to the tactical level. These reviews have made recommendations on matters ranging from the military kit to counter-insurgency strategy or the relationship of security to economic and political change. DFID's approach in Basra has evolved significantly over time, from the initial priority of focusing on the dilapidated infrastructure—work that has benefited more than 1 million Iraqis—to a focus on developing Iraqi economic capacity.
	Of course our experiences in both Afghanistan and Iraq have had a significant impact on the workings of the Foreign Office, with greater emphasis on cross-departmental planning and working, including through the tri-departmental stabilisation unit. More resource is being devoted to post-conflict planning and delivery as well as the development of a much smarter approach to risk management. The accumulation of internal lessons learned over the past six years, as well as internal reviews conducted, is all material that an inquiry could draw on.
	I was interested to hear the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks say last year that he favoured an inquiry along the lines of the Franks inquiry, which he referred to as "the model inquiry". The Franks inquiry was set up after the end of the Falklands conflict. The fact that it was conducted in private meant that it had access to all the relevant papers. In that respect, it was significantly different from the US Baker-Hamilton report. Franks was not a judicial inquiry so it did not require its witnesses to have lawyers. There were no leaks or interim findings to distract from the final conclusions and recommendations.
	Of course, it is important to remember that Franks looked only at the run-up to the Falklands war in the wake of Lord Carrington's resignation. Most discussion of the case for an inquiry into Iraq has not favoured limiting an inquiry to the lead up to the war, but is instead more interested in the conduct of the war and its aftermath. The Government have never demurred from that view.

Keith Simpson: Can the Foreign Secretary explain why our major ally, the US, continues to examine and review the lead up to the war and the lessons to be learned, and do so in public? It is not a bogus argument; it is a fact. Many Americans are amazed that we do not do the same.

David Miliband: That is a bogus argument. As I have just said, the Baker-Hamilton inquiry did not have access to the sort of secret papers that everyone in this House believes that an official inquiry should have access to. Although it is correct that America is a country that conducts numerous internal reviews—as we do, too—America has not had the sort of official inquiry that the hon. Gentleman's party is asking for.
	Iraq was a source of great division in this House—within parties as well as between them—as well as in the country. Those divisions will not be erased; nor, above all, will the loss suffered by the bereaved families of our troops lost in action; nor, indeed, will the loss of Iraqi lives. We can never pay tribute to them often enough.
	The future of Iraq should engage us all, whatever position we took on the war, because peace and security in Iraq is not only vital to regional stability but critical to the UK's interests on human rights, counter-terrorism and energy security. Once our armed contribution has concluded and our combat troops have returned home, we should invest the time and effort to learn thoroughly any further lessons. For now, all the efforts of our professional and experienced staff—from our soldiers to our diplomats and aid workers—need to be focused on creating the best possible transition from a predominantly military relationship to a predominantly economic, diplomatic and cultural relationship with Iraq. That is what the Government will be doing and I believe that it is what the House should be doing, too.

Edward Davey: I think they would. I am not so sure whether that would fit in with this particular inquiry, as I shall discuss later. We need to be careful about the remit of the Iraq inquiry. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and the Liberal Democrats are very much in favour of a strategic defence review that might deal with some of the points to which he alluded.
	The Foreign Secretary tried to deal with the fourth argument for an early inquiry, which was that memories might fade and records be lost. We heard that argument once again today from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks. Last year, the Foreign Secretary started well, pointing out that much had already been produced for the previous four inquiries. He conceded that these inquiries had been narrow and limited, but the implication was that they had helped to conserve the information and gather together it so that it would be ready for the full inquiry. I would almost give him half a point for that exchange. Since then, we have had revelations through freedom of information requests of documents that it would seem Hutton definitely could not have seen—and that Butler either did not see, or failed to focus on.
	As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks reminded us, it is indisputable that, with the passage of time, memories fade and people die. So the Foreign Secretary did not even win his strongest position. In other words, in opposing the case for an early inquiry last year—12 months ago—the Foreign Secretary failed.
	Yet here we are a year later, and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are still playing for time. However, we need to be careful and look at what they said, and in that regard the intervention from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) had the Foreign Secretary on the ropes. The Government's position is that there will be an inquiry when the combat troops have returned, but there is no precision about when it would be set up at that point. Indeed,  Hansard shows that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said that the case for an inquiry would be "considered" when the troops had returned. There is no specific timetable: the Government are still wriggling about their position, and that is simply not acceptable.
	The case for setting up an inquiry immediately, with no more time wasted, is, in our view, watertight. It has been so for a long time, yet the Government's continued resistance invites the question, "If not now, then when?"
	The logic of the Government's position, which was again drawn out by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, is that the inquiry should be announced now and begin on or around 31 July, when the troops are supposed to be coming home. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) pressed the Foreign Secretary on the timing of the inquiry during the Queen's Speech debate on foreign affairs. He asked whether it would have to wait until every last man was out of Iraq, and the right hon. Gentleman's response was absolutely clear. Indeed, he was as precise as any member of the Government has ever been about the matter when, on 10 December last year, he said:
	"No...We are not going to hide behind the idea that the last troop must have come home. We have always made it clear that our commitment is in respect of combat troops"—[ Official Report, 10 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 566.]
	To be fair to him, the Foreign Secretary repeated that today.
	As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks set out, even the lame excuses of last year can have no force now. On the face of it, if we are to have faith in anything that the Government say, they must announce the inquiry before the summer recess, at the very latest. If they do not, it could—and it certainly should—have serious implications.
	Already, the Secretary of State for Justice, the former Foreign Secretary, has vetoed a decision by the Information Tribunal and blocked the publication of the minutes of the key Cabinet meetings. He has been judge and jury in his own trial, and that makes it look as though the Government were guilty of covering something up. However, if the Government fail even to set up the inquiry that they have promised, then the charge that the Prime Minister and others have something more sinister to hide will become very toxic.
	Let us assume for a moment that even No. 10 now knows that further prevarication is impossible. When the Government eventually get around to setting up the inquiry, questions will arise about its nature. The Conservatives today proposed the Privy Council approach, along the lines of the Franks inquiry, and that has some attractions, with the greatest being that such an inquiry would be able to receive top secret material and ensure access to all papers and persons.
	Yet that approach has one big disadvantage—that it would meet, as I understand it, in private all the time. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) has argued, one of the purposes of an inquiry is to restore the public's trust and confidence. That demands an inquiry in the open.
	So what should the Government do? Well, we believe that a Privy Council approach is better than a judicial inquiry in this case. The key questions and the key judgments that will have to be made are essentially political, not legal—and, above all, we do not want a repeat of Hutton. I can see no reason why a Privy Council inquiry could not hold many of its meetings in public, as long as clear rules are established from the start for when it goes into session in camera.
	There is huge experience now in the courts and other tribunals about managing the balance between public and private hearings. Not least with the new procedures for dealing with terrorist cases, there is up-to-date and recent experience in a variety of procedures about how to strike the balance in different ways. So when the Government eventually announce the inquiry, we will want to know how it proposes to strike that balance. We believe that the inquiry must lean as much as possible towards total openness and transparency.

Tony Wright: I very much enjoyed the speech made by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is just leaving the Chamber. As I always do, I am now in a devilish way detaining him.
	The only note I thought was missing from the right hon. Gentleman's speech was humility. If we take ourselves back to those days in 2002 and 2003, I am afraid that the people in this place who were the great cheerleaders for war were not interested in exploring the kind of questions being asked from the Labour Benches about the legality of the war, and whether there were in fact weapons of mass destruction or whether a false prospectus was at work. None of those questions was at all interesting to the Opposition— [ Interruption. ] —to the official Opposition, who simply wanted to go further, faster.
	The courage was shown on the Labour Benches— [ Interruption. ]—and the Liberal Democrat Benches, where Members interrogated the arguments, and huge numbers of people on the Labour Benches found they could not go with the Government. If there is to be an inquiry, the one inquiry the official Opposition could set up immediately would be why they failed during that critical period—the one time when they needed to be effective. As we now know, they had it within their power to prevent British engagement in the Iraq war. The Conservative party should immediately put in place an inquiry as to why the official Opposition failed during that period.

Tony Wright: I suspect most of us are quite anxious not to relive all those arguments in our few minutes' speeches. I was simply making the point that the arguments were had intensely at the time, but they were being had intensely by Members on the Labour Benches and on the Liberal Democrat Benches and not at all on the Conservative Benches, with a very few—

John Baron: First, I concur with the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) on his suggestion that it is probably members of the armed forces who served, and who are still serving, in Iraq who want an inquiry more than anyone else. They want to know the answers to certain questions to do with why this country went to war, because they have done everything that we have asked of them. The fault, if there is a fault with regard to the war, lies with us in this place.
	No one could doubt that we need an inquiry now. We have seen the scale of the foreign policy disaster, and the scandalous presentation of the intelligence information in the lead up to the war, and now the troops are returning. Now is a good time to have that inquiry. I do not think that anybody can dispute the fact that the war was an act of great folly. We went to war on a false premise; there were no weapons of mass destruction. We removed a tyrant, but that was never the justification for the war. It has never been the justification for any war. The intervention has brought about the involvement of foreign fighters in Iraq, some of them al-Qaeda. It has meant that the balance of power has been disrupted, to the extent that Iran is now the predominant power in the region. It has radicalised parts of the Muslim world against us, and we have seen for ourselves the great sacrifice of our troops in theatre.
	All that was done, I would suggest, to satisfy the hubris of a former Prime Minister who still to this day believes that it is better to err with the United States than to stand up and say to a friend that they got something wrong. An inquiry is required to examine not just the misrepresentation of intelligence in the lead up to the war, or the lack of post-war planning, but, to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, our collective failure to reign back, or at least challenge, the hawkish ambitions of someone whom I certainly consider to be a rogue politician.
	Nowhere is the failure—our failure—better illustrated than in the Iraq dossier of 2002. A good number of hon. Members present will remember that we were recalled in September 2002 to hear about what was supposed to be a very important document. It was an opportunity for the Government to share with the public, as well as with us, for the first time internal advice given to Ministers by the security services.
	As a result of freedom of information requests made since then, and since Hutton, two things have become clear. First, the dossier was not, as our former Prime Minister claimed, solely the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Spin doctors were heavily involved on the inside of the process, drafting material, making suggestions and influencing the way in which the document was presented. Secondly, it is now possible, because of the wealth of information that we have received, even since the Hutton inquiry, from freedom of information requests, to piece together exactly how the intelligence reports were, to use that unfortunate term, sexed up.
	Let me briefly touch on the role of the spin doctors. We have long known that the dossier requested by the Prime Minister was, in reality, commissioned from the chairman of the JIC by Alastair Campbell, who chaired the two planning meetings on the dossier on 5 September and 9 September. We now know that spin doctors were also on the inside of the drafting process. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than the fact, which we have since learned, that one of the press officers, John Williams of the Foreign Office, actually wrote a preliminary draft dossier one day before the official draft was circulated under the name of the JIC chairman, John Scarlett, on 10 September.
	The significance of that document was downplayed by the Government during the Hutton inquiry. The Foreign Office was finally forced to make the dossier publicly available only last year, following a ruling of the Information Commissioner—a point that I raised in Prime Minister's questions with the then Prime Minister. As a result, there is every reason to think that Williams was part of the formal drafting process, and that his influence was formative. For one thing, John Scarlett's draft of the following day was circulated with an acknowledgment of
	"considerable help from John Williams".
	Indeed, it is possible to identify passages that appear almost verbatim in both versions. Drafting notes and instructions apparently originated by Williams also appear in Scarlett's draft.
	Out of fairness, I have asked the Foreign Office to publish any information that both people could have used as a common source of material, because one could theoretically suggest that such material was the reason why the spin doctor or press officer's draft, and the subsequent draft of the JIC chairman, were the same or very similar. However, the Foreign Office has continually refused to publish any such information. One can only infer that John William's draft played a major role in the production of the draft produced the next day by the JIC chairman.
	It is important to remind ourselves why the involvement of those press officers is so important. Lord Hutton cleared the Government of sexing up the intelligence only because he believed that
	"The dossier was prepared and drafted by a small team of the assessment staff of the JIC"
	and
	"was issued...with the full approval of the JIC."
	All the evidence suggests that that is simply not true. Once the spin doctors became involved, the dossier process took on a life of its own, and the JIC retained only a distant, supervisory role.
	That the dossier was sexed up there can be no doubt. We have long suspected that balanced judgments and reservations expressed by the intelligence community were transformed into near-certainties, and now we have some of the evidence. One clue was given away in a response to an FOI request made only this month. An internal minute from Desmond Bowen, deputy head of the overseas and defence secretariat in the Cabinet Office, to John Scarlett, copying in Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, reads:
	"In looking at the WMD sections, you will clearly want to be as firm and authoritative as you can be. You will clearly need to judge the extent to which you need to hedge your judgements with, for example, 'it is almost certain' and similar caveats...I appreciate that this can increase the authenticity of the document in terms of it being a proper assessment".
	He goes on to say that that is absolutely necessary. That is a damning summary of what went wrong in the dossier-drafting process.

John Baron: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has only recently come into the Chamber. As one of those six who voted against the war, I will not bother answering that.
	I am trying to build up a case as to why the intelligence was misrepresented to the House. That is one good reason why we were misled. I have no problem with any Member who voted for the war, because the Prime Minister was fundamentally misleading the House in presenting the intelligence that he did. It was very excusable to support the war at that time, when we were being told by our Prime Minister that the intelligence available to him had built up such a strong case for war.
	But I accept that we as a Chamber and as a Parliament failed in our duty to question that Prime Minister strongly enough, which is why the inquiry should have available to it all the Cabinet papers leading up to that decision, because that will reveal that the decision was taken in July 2002 to go to war, the precondition being that public opinion had to be prepared in this country. That is why the dodgy dossier had such an important role.
	Time is short and I know that others want to get in, so let me summarise. There is clear indication that spin doctors played a fundamental role in the production of that intelligence, and that it had a mission to persuade a sceptical House and a sceptical public of the need for war. As I have suggested, the decision to go to war had been taken well before. There is a leaked Cabinet Office memo of 21 July 2002, which the Government have refused to dismiss as untrue and which was published in  The Sunday Times. It makes the point that the decision had been taken, but a precondition was that the then Prime Minister had to persuade a sceptical public that war was needed. That was the importance of the dodge dossier.
	In conclusion, speaking from Iraq in June 2007, the Prime Minister said that lessons must be learned on the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war. Almost two years after that, the troops are returning home. Now is the time for action, not words.

Angus MacNeil: I will not detain the House for long. I would like to deal with the issue of why we need an inquiry into the Iraq war, and why it is so important. As we know, and has been said by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and many others, the war was based on a lie, propaganda and hype. Perhaps people watching outside this Chamber have bought into the idea that politicians lie perpetually. I know, and we know, that that is not so. There can be arguments on emphasis and shades of grey, but since I have come here in 2005, there have not been any big whopping factual lies. The claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could reach us in 45 minutes was a big whopping factual lie. It was the lie on which the propaganda and hype was based. So far, it was the first time that the UK went to war on the grounds of dodgy, unsound intelligence—and I hope that it will be the last. That alone is enough to justify an inquiry: for a state of 60 million people to be so utterly misled should be enough to justify an inquiry.
	On 18 March 2003, the Prime Minister gave a speech to goad the country to war—that is also enough to justify an inquiry. I encourage Members to look back at that speech in  Hansard, column 761, to see the linguistic gymnastics employed. The speech becomes more absurd in the reading with the passage of time. The Prime Minister made mention of "unreasonable vetoes", which was a real Blair classic of true linguistic gymnastics. He was, of course, referring to France, which had opposed the war at the UN Security Council. In his actions and in his words, Blair made France right and he made the UK wrong.
	On 18 March 2003, the Prime Minister stood at that Dispatch Box—I saw it on television; I was not a Member—with his macho, starry-eyed posturing, challenging the House of Commons to stand down British troops and turn back. The fact was that he had already marched them up to the top of the hill, and he was relying on the base, gut instincts that many in this House unfortunately had in order to carry on. People voted for war, feeling that they were already too far in. Of course, people should not have thought with their guts. Many people got shot in their guts as a result.
	One of the reasons why we should have an inquiry is that this House regularly pays homage to those who have had their lives damaged or have lost relatives in this war. Today I was given a letter by the military families who have lost people in the war. They want an inquiry, and I am grateful to Rose Gentle, Reg Keys and Chris Nineham for a copy of their letter. If the families want an inquiry, surely that should be enough for the Government, who regularly pay homage at the Dispatch Box to the families and their loved ones who have been lost in this war. In their letter to the Prime Minister they say:
	"Our sons believed that the conflict was to neutralise the WMD threat."
	That belief was fed by grafting—playing on the innate jingoism of some journalists and newspapers, and some Members of this House, who swallowed the 45 minutes spin hook, line and sinker. The 45 minutes headlines in the newspapers went unchallenged by the Government, and that is significant. I would wager that had the headlines said the opposite—that the Government were lying about 45 minutes—they would have indignantly challenged and bullied. Their complicity with headlines about the 45 minutes claim shows exactly the game that they were playing.
	This war, as has been said by others, has taken the lives of 150,000 people directly, and according to some estimates its consequences might have led to the deaths of another 600,000. The dead and injured, and their families, should be honoured in this House by an inquiry that will answer the fundamental question—why? I was not in the House at the time, but my answer to that question is that it was an odd, sycophantic desire on the part of Tony Blair to appease the discredited former US President George Bush. In my view, it is as simple as that. That is also in line with the intervention made by the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) on his feelings about what happened at the US ranch, where the two men connived for war.
	The case for war did not last long. Four months after it started, the UK's fig leaf of an excuse was starting to fall apart. After Blair had spoken to Congress, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) said:
	"Inch by inch, Tony Blair is moving away from the ground that he stood on when he dragged an unwilling country into war.
	The Government should be holding an independent...inquiry into...how the country came to be misled about Iraq's arms capability."
	That was six years ago. The Government have been ducking and diving, dodging and weaving, for six years over an inquiry into the Iraq war. Five years ago, as was mentioned earlier, Australia held such an independent inquiry, which criticised their own Government, but criticised other allied Governments far more greatly. At the time that the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was telling the House that we should not hold an inquiry, he went into a broom cupboard for a video conference with Congress in the Baker-Hamilton inquiry.
	I have mentioned lives, which are important, but in these credit crunch times I would also like to consider the financial cost of the war. Last year, the cost of military operations in Iraq was £1.5 billion, which equates to £4 million a day. Approximately £6.5 billion has been spent since the war began, and I often wonder for what else that money could have paid in health, education and infrastructure, rather than being spent on destroying health, education and infrastructure. If ever there were a case for turning swords into ploughshares, the Iraq debacle of the Labour Government of 2003 makes it.
	We need an inquiry to stamp out such behaviour among world leaders and aspiring world leaders. Let us just imagine, as the superpowers of China and India grow, their feeling that they could interfere in European matters the way that we felt we could interfere in middle eastern matters in the case of Iraq. What future do we bequeath our descendants if we leave them a world in which such behaviour on our doorstep went unpunished, or at least uninvestigated?
	I draw hon. Members' attention to an extract from, of all people, a former Ministry of Defence permanent secretary, Sir Michael Quinlan, who said of the former Prime Minister:
	"He exerted or connived... to mould legal advice to his preference and failed to disclose fully... even that moulded advice; and... so arranged the working of the Cabinet that colleagues had no timely or systematic opportunity to consider the merits of his policy in an informed manner."
	The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) first drew that to the House's attention in the debate that Plaid Cymru and the SNP led on 31 October 2006. It was damning then and it remains so; the passage of time does not diminish it. The very least that the families and the dead deserve from the House is a full inquiry into the war in Iraq. I say, therefore, get it going soon.

Gordon Prentice: As I said, Butler had a narrow remit and what has subsequently come out tells a different story from what Butler said at the time.
	The Hutton inquiry displayed the hidden inner wiring of the British Government, but it failed to take evidence under oath, as my friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) said earlier. When Lord Hutton appeared before the Select Committee on which I served, I asked him why he did not take evidence under oath. The Prime Minister was, famously, called before him. Lord Hutton replied that he did not think it was necessary. I believe that it is, and that the new inquiry needs to take evidence on oath to get to the truth.
	There has been a cascade of memoirs. Of course, memories are beginning to fade, but some memoirs have been blocked. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was our man in Baghdad in 2003-04 and served in the United Nations five years previously, right through the run-up to the war in Iraq, has written a book called "The Cost of War". It has still not been published. When he appeared before the Committee in January 2006, he told us that his memoirs were
	"in the fridge not the freezer."
	They are in the freezer and should be defrosted. Last week, the Justice Secretary, who is the former Foreign Secretary, told us that the minutes of the critical Cabinet meetings could not be published, although he went on to say that they would be released to any inquiry that was set up.
	We need an inquiry. My friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), with all his experience as a former Armed Forces Minister, said that in his travels around the world he did not meet military people who were calling for an inquiry. However, the military top brass are calling for one. Lord Bramhall, no less, said that the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, failed properly to consult the chiefs of staff or his Cabinet colleagues before going to war. It is perfectly proper to have a senior military person on the commission of inquiry, as happened a lifetime and more ago in the inquiry into what happened in the Dardanelles. Lord Craig, former Air Marshal of the RAF, supports an inquiry. He said:
	"It is very timely to have an inquiry before memories fade."
	Memories do fade, as the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said. With every passing year, they dim. My friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) has just published a book, "A View from the Foothills", in which he recounts discussions we had with Tony Blair way back in 2002-03. I remember them, but one starts to forget the expression on a person's face, the people who spoke and those who chose to stay silent and so on. Those things are all part of the story. General Sir Mike Jackson wants an inquiry now, not after all the soldiers have come back from Iraq.
	We need an inquiry to establish the facts. We need to learn from what happened, and, most important, we need to ensure that it does not happen again. We must also rebuild public confidence. My friend the Member for Cannock Chase referred to the Public Administration Committee's various reports on inquiries. Most recently, it produced a report recommending that Parliament set up its own parliamentary commission of inquiry.
	Why do we have to wait on the Executive to act? We are told that Parliament is supreme. Why is it beyond the wit of MPs in all parts of the House who were against the war to come together and table a motion to force the Government to bring about such an inquiry? When Lord Justice Scott held his inquiry into arms for Iraq, which took four years, even he said that if Select Committees had had all the information that he had,
	"A select committee might have been a better form for the Inquiry to have taken."
	However, as everyone knows, Select Committees have their flaws. The answer is a properly constituted parliamentary commission of inquiry.
	It is very important to take evidence on oath. The inquiry should meet in public, but with provision to meet in private if sensitive material needs to be considered. Civil servants and diplomats should be invited to give evidence when they feel they have something relevant to say. We had a diplomat and a civil servant before the Public Administration Committee last week. Brian Jones was our top man for chemical and biological warfare. He told us that before the dossiers were published, he had huge reservations about the claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he was the man who should have known. He wrote to the deputy chief director of intelligence to register his misgivings. He thought that there very probably would be no weapons of mass destruction.
	We also heard persuasive evidence from a former diplomat who resigned from the Foreign Office over the decision to go to war in Iraq. He was a man who loved his job and wanted to be a diplomat. He said that in the run-up to war
	"there was such a momentum towards war, such urgency about it, that anyone who put their hand up at that point would have been crushed."

Tobias Ellwood: The hon. Lady's views are now on the record.
	It was interesting to hear a former Defence Minister say that, even with everything he now knew, he still believed that war was the right decision, because Saddam Hussein was a bad man. Yes, we knew he was a bad man, but I thought that regime change was in fact illegal.
	The second document that I wish to bring to the House's attention was released today and is called "Pursue, Prevent, Protect, Prepare: The United Kingdom's Strategy for Countering International Terrorism". Perhaps "Plan" should be added—that is, we should plan for what to do if we invade a Muslim country, because if we do not have a plan when we invade, we leave a vacuum and extremists take over. That is exactly what has happened in Iraq and, unfortunately, something very similar is taking place in Afghanistan.
	There are many questions that need to be answered. First, there are questions about going to war, weapons of mass destruction, intelligence, claims about 45 minutes, what Alastair Campbell's role was and the absence of a second resolution. The resolution that we voted on in the House was 10 years old. How can we allow our military to go to war on the back of a resolution that is 10 years old?
	That aside, it may be that Parliament in fact votes in favour of war. The more important question then is: how do we conduct ourselves in the aftermath of that attack? That is where we fundamentally failed our military. We went into Iraq—I pay tribute to 7 Armoured Brigade, which did a fantastic job in bringing Basra to peace—the dust then settled and our armed forces looked over their shoulders and said, "What next?" I believe that Tony Blair would probably still be in office had there been a proper plan and had we been able to move Basra forward and make it a safe and prosperous place.
	The absence of a plan meant that nothing happened, and six years later we were still there, trying to work out what to do. That is not the way to conduct counter-insurgency; it is not even the way to get rid of a dictator, but it is the way the Government proved there was no planning. That is why we are calling so vehemently for an inquiry into Iraq. We had no plan, there was no strategy and there was no idea. There were no efforts to harness the euphoria of the fall of Saddam Hussein and to sow the seeds of governance. Without a plan, nothing happens and we turn ourselves from liberators into occupiers.
	I ask the Minister: where was the army of civil servants, the linguists, the engineers and the planners? There were none. Where was the post-conflict construction plan that would lead Iraq into prosperity? There was none. I am afraid that I place a lot of the blame not on the military, but on another Department—the Department for International Development. Where was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short)? I understand that she sent a memo round her Department on 23 March 2003, the day of the invasion, saying, "We're not sure if this war is actually legal. Do nothing. Do not get involved." The Department therefore sat on its hands for two months until eventually she resigned and a new person was put in, at which point the Department woke up and said, "My God, we should get involved here."
	That is where we let down our military. It meant its job got harder and harder, week after week, month after month and year after year. Looting turned into the development of militias, people grouped together to try to salvage some sort of livelihood and we became the problem. The thing that united these militias as we went in and around Basra and the palace was the fact that they all had a pop at our military, showing how we were regarded—as actual occupiers by that time. I am thus astonished that the Defence Secretary had the audacity to come to this House on 14 January this year and state:
	"I am proud to say that we are at the point of completing the UK mission... our forces can return home with their heads held high."—[ Official Report, 14 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 244.]
	How far from the truth is it possible to be? I believe that not since Suez have we had such cause to hang our heads in shame and also to scratch our heads over the political failure—not a military one. It was a political failure, in which we cut troop numbers too fast, reconstructed too slowly and eventually lost control completely.
	I am not saying that war was avoidable, but I am saying that there was no planning for the peace. The truth came out when Colin Powell admitted in his Adlai Stevenson moment that when he went to the United Nations on 5 February to explain why the invasion was justified, it was one of the lowest points in his career—he had to defend the indefensible at that point.
	The atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein might well have meant an eventual invasion, but as a military person, I say to the House that there are many ways of getting rid of a tyrant other than a full invasion. If we choose a full invasion, we should make sure that we have a second wave of reconstruction and so forth backing up the Army to take advantage of that invasion. The 7 Armoured Brigade went in there, looked over their shoulders and said, "Where is everybody else? My God, we're stuck here on our own." I am afraid that that is exactly what is happening in Afghanistan.
	I am grateful that Richard Holbrooke, now a responsible special adviser on Afghanistan, is about to announce a civilian surge, finally to catch up with the military one and help the people on the ground. It is important to win over hearts and minds on the ground so that people do not turn against us. I appeal to the Government to listen and relieve the military of the blame being placed on it for the length of time it has taken for us to get to where we are today.
	I question whether where we are today is where the Government wanted us to be six years ago. Did we really want to be handing Iraq over to the United States armed forces rather than to the Iraqis? That cannot be the objective that we set six years ago—absolutely not. This word "overwatch" is one that I never heard during my long military career. This is another example of the Foreign Secretary proving how out of touch he is with what is actually happening on the ground. I believe that General Andy Salmon is in charge now and he is doing a fantastic job: he is doing a bit of training with the Iraqis, but the emphasis is on going home. The forces have consolidated themselves at the airport and they are doing absolutely nothing else. They are doing no patrolling whatever.
	I hope that the Government will wake up and not wait—this is what I believe their tactics to be—until we are so close to a general election before allowing a full inquiry that none of the current Ministers will be in office or probably even in Parliament to hear the results of such an important inquiry.
	The 7 Armoured Brigade through to my battalion—the 2nd Battalion The Rifles—had to retreat from Basra palace to Basra airport with their tails between their legs. That is not the way our military forces should be leaving Iraq. It came to the point when the Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki actually said that Basra was being left to the mercy of the militiamen, because we were not providing the necessary assets for the military to do its job properly and a civilian force to back it up.
	I conclude by stating my belief that in our long history of military engagement, Iraq was certainly not our finest hour. That is absolutely no fault of our military; it is wholly the fault of those who work and operate in Whitehall, who failed to plan for the peace. Consequently, the UK's reputation as a reliable and competent country, willing to step forward when others are unable to do so, has actually suffered.
	An inquiry in the war in Iraq will show that the way we fought the war was not the fault of our military but due to the incompetence of this Government in managing the peace. That is why the Government continue to find excuses to delay this important review of what went wrong. I believe there many lessons to be learned and I am horrified to see that we are repeating the same mistakes in Afghanistan. Until we wake up to that, I am afraid that we are going to be asking questions about what went wrong in Afghanistan in five years' time. That is going to be a horrible place to be.

Lynne Jones: I am aware of the time constraint, so I shall be very brief.
	I spoke in the debate on the inquiry a year ago and gave my reasons for feeling that the Butler inquiry and the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiries were completely inadequate, so I shall not rehearse those arguments again. What I want to do today is draw the House's attention to an allegation by Ron Suskind, a United States investigative author, in his book "The Way of the World".
	Mr. Suskind's information is based on conversations that he had with none other than Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and his deputy Nigel Inkster. From those conversations, Mr. Suskind learned that one of the United Kingdom's top agents, Michael Shipster, actually met—in Oman in 2003, just before the war—Tahir Jalil Habbush, who was Saddam Hussein's head of intelligence. Apparently, Mr. Habbush was a well-established source of intelligence. I should be interested to know what has happened to him, because he is not one of the members of Saddam Hussein's former regime who have been apprehended or brought to justice in any way. In fact, it has been suggested that he has been protected by western intelligence sources.
	Mr. Habbush told Michael Shipster that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and that far from seeking to conceal the presence of such weapons, he actually wanted to conceal their absence because he was more concerned about a possible invasion from Iran than about an invasion from the United States. The sources of that information—Richard Dearlove and Nigel Inkster—have queried the exact recollection of those conversations, but they have not denied the substance of the allegation that one of our top agents obtained information that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. It would appear that that intelligence was ignored, and we also know from other sources—such as Brian Jones, the former branch head in the Defence Intelligence Staff, and more recently, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), Carne Ross, who was First Secretary at the United Nations for the Foreign Office until 2004—that there are lots of facts in the run-up to the Iraq war that have yet to come to light.
	We should be grateful to Ron Suskind for beginning to shine a light on some of the sources of intelligence that were not drawn to the attention of the House, and were not mentioned in the Butler report or by the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wrote to the Chair of that Committee at the beginning of this month asking for an investigation into this evidence. I have received an acknowledgement. I spoke to one of the assistant Clerks today, who told me that I will receive a reply and gave various reasons why I have not received more than an acknowledgement so far despite the fact that other people have written to the Committee drawing attention to this information.
	It is clear that there were people in the intelligence community who knew the truth: that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Somehow, their views were suppressed and we were given a completely false view of what the intelligence said. For that reason, I believe we need a full inquiry under the kind of conditions that my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle outlined, with witnesses required to give evidence on oath.

Liam Fox: Whether to send armed forces into combat is one of the most important and difficult decisions faced by any Government—and in the case of Iraq, by Parliament. Whether Members think the decision to go to war in Iraq was right or wrong, members of our armed forces fought, and in some cases died, believing that what they were doing was in a just and noble cause. We must remain very sensitive to that, and to the feelings of their families, as we discuss these issues, and I think today's debate has been conducted very much in those terms. Whatever else is in dispute today, the bravery and commitment of our armed forces is not.
	In announcing in his opening speech that an inquiry will be undertaken as soon as practicable after 31 July, the Foreign Secretary admitted that the Government are now being dragged incrementally and unavoidably towards the inevitable will of the House, but the Government are doing this with the least possible grace and in a way that brings the least credit to themselves and reflects least well on the institution of Government. The House will not be sitting on 31 July, so will this inquiry be set up without an announcement to Parliament and without Members having the ability to question the Government, or will we have to wait until October, with the utterly unnecessary delay that that will entail? Tonight, Members have the chance to bring forward what now appears to be the Government's own timetable, and to avoid an unjustifiable delay on this issue.
	A number of matters will need to be considered, among them the scope and remit of the inquiry, which has been widely debated by Members today. If public and parliamentary concerns are to be met, there must be the fullest remit, including the run-up to the war, the conduct of the war, and the preparation for, and conduct of, the post-conflict period. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said, if these matters have not been addressed when we reach the next general election, they will be subsequently.
	I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said in his speech, but I profoundly disagree on one point. He said that he did not wish to see any inquiry into the military. I understand what he meant by that, but I think the House and the country would want to know the military advice that was given and whether it was accepted—and, indeed, whether there was at any point any political interference in decisions made by the military. If that was what he meant, that is entirely fine. I hope that this would be within the scope of an inquiry, because not to consider it would leave a major piece of the jigsaw missing and a major piece of understanding lost to history.
	There are two main reasons why we need to go ahead with this inquiry, the first of which relates to holding the Executive to account. We have heard a number of passionate speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House, and one of the main charges that has been repeatedly made in this debate is that Tony Blair, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, deliberately misled the British people in order to take them into a war that they otherwise would not have supported—there can be no more serious charge. I walked into the Division Lobby after Tony Blair that night and said to him, "That was a very impressive speech. I hope you are right." He must also be given every opportunity to be vindicated by an inquiry. Although many people in this country still find it hard to believe that a British Prime Minister would ever behave in the way that has been suggested, we need to restore trust and integrity in our system. Seldom in this House, and certainly never in my 17 years here, has the integrity of a Prime Minister been attacked in the way that it has been today, and it is in everyone's interest to have this cleared up. Several hon. Members, not all of whom are in their places, raised the issue of whether Parliament would have the chance to set up an inquiry of its own—well, in just a few minutes, that is exactly what this House of Commons will have the chance to do.
	The other main reason why we want an inquiry is to learn the lessons. The Foreign Secretary was right to say that we cannot draw a simple parallel between Iraq and Afghanistan, but that does not mean that there is not a huge read-across. On time scales, what have we learned from our experience in Iraq that we can apply to Afghanistan about the speed with which the reconstruction can take place? Iraq was about reconstruction, but Afghanistan is about construction. If Jeffersonian democracy cannot be applied to Iraq successfully in a decade, how long will this take in Afghanistan? Surely it is in everybody's interests for us to be very clear about that.
	What about the reconstruction plans? Was there indeed institutional resistance from the Department for International Development because of the then Secretary of State's attitudes at that time? In a debate in this House, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) said that
	"in a written answer on 15 October last year,"—
	2002—
	"the Secretary of State told me that she was not actively discussing a humanitarian strategy for Iraq with the UN, the US or the European Union.
	It is surely not acceptable for the Department for International Development to adopt an ostrich stance, sticking its head in the sand and hoping that war will never happen. There are leaked UN reports of UN contingency planning, but at the end of last month still no funds had been made available for even the basic preparations to begin."—[ Official Report, 30 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 1047.]
	What have we learned about insurgency and counter-insurgency, and how we deal with them? My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) made a passionate speech about how we went into Basra believing that we knew what we were doing about counter-insurgency. We believed that our experience from Northern Ireland could be directly translated into the south of Iraq, but we had some big lessons to learn. How exactly will we take those lessons and transfer them into Afghanistan, so that we do not make similar mistakes again? We cannot afford the time to wait—the delay—for such an inquiry to take place, because these things are already happening in real time. We need to ensure that those lessons are learned, for the well-being of our armed forces and of the people in Afghanistan.
	We need to learn these lessons while memories are fresh. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) made the point graphically that this is not just about the facts on paper, but about the recollections, the pressure, the tone of conversations and the whisperings in corridors about when people knew what—all those things are extremely important.
	We also need to see what lessons we have learned on procurement and the equipment for our armed forces. Many bereaved families who lost loved ones in Iraq will expect the inquiry to address this key issue: why did the Government hold back on authorising the acquisition of sufficient equipment to protect our soldiers? On 9 December 2003, the National Audit Office said:
	"Some key shortfalls and lessons were, however, identified. Many arose because of a combination of not having enough operational stock on shelves, enough time to make good the shortfalls and difficulties in ensuring supplies were delivered."
	A report in  The Guardian on 22 January 2004 about Sir Kevin Tebbit's evidence said that the Government did not order crucial equipment for British troops because of
	"the fear among ministers that a decision to order 'urgent' operational requirements would provoke anti-war Labour MPs."
	To put the matter in a more personal context, in the inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of Sergeant Roberts, the coroner, Andrew Walker, said:
	"Sergeant Roberts' death was the result of delay and serious failings in the acquisition and support chain that resulted in a significant shortage within his fighting unit of Enhanced Combat Body Armour and none being available for him to wear."
	What lessons do we still need to learn? Why have we had this unnecessary delay when we still have troops fighting in Afghanistan and those lessons may be literally vital for them?
	The Government today have not even pretended to hide behind their previous discredited excuses for delay. It is now a simple, nakedly political delay, designed to prevent the truth from emerging before the general election. The Government should now bow to the inevitable. This House and the country need to learn from what went wrong so that we do not repeat those mistakes in the future. For the sake of the sacrifices already made and the wellbeing of our military and civilians alike, we should have no further delay for blatantly party political reasons. Members on both sides of the House must ask themselves whether they are willing to tolerate naked partisan prevarication or whether they want the truth to emerge.

Bob Neill: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Government's amendment, which I shall come to later, makes a passing and broad-brush reference to certain proposals, but I do not think that they are adequate, as I hope I shall explain. His other extremely important point is the significant impact of business rates on the viability of businesses as a whole. Local firms in particular cite rates, after rent and staff, as their highest overhead. A significant hike in business rates, therefore, can be the difference between survival and prosperity or a business going down the tubes with jobs and prosperity being lost. That is why the effect of the proposed increase in business rates, compounded with the difficulties that many businesses in the small and medium-sized sectors are already suffering, makes the debate so timely. The situation for those people is particularly grave.
	Against that background, it is not surprising that troubling figures are already emerging on the impact of business rate increases on top of other costs of the economic downturn. So far, the Local Government Association reports that four out of five councils have found an increase in empty properties in their town centres. That was before this rate increase happened; 80 per cent. of councils found that businesses are being driven out of our high streets, thanks clearly and firmly to the economic failures of this Government.
	The LGA also pointed out a significant increase—of 56 per cent.—in the number of firms having difficulty paying business rates. That is an enormous increase, and if firms are having difficulty paying their business rates, they may well have difficulty in meeting their other obligations. Their viability is in danger. Why? It is because of the failure of the Government to do anything about proper liquidity for genuine and otherwise viable businesses—reflected in their failure to adopt the proposals advanced by my party for a proper loan guarantee scheme to get credit flowing—and because of the compounding of costs and regulations for those businesses. As a result, businesses are caught in a deadly pincer movement. Some eight out of 10 councils also found an increase in the number of small firms seeking business support. Those three sets of statistics from across the country are grim figures that are a serious indictment of this Government's handling of matters.
	I turn to the impacts of the business rate which we seek to address in our motion, to some of the points where we take issue with the Government, and to areas where we believe that more can be done. The first issue is the increase of 5 per cent. that is due this year. That is especially hard for businesses to bear, because the methodology that the Government have adopted is difficult for many people to understand. It is based on rental values in April 2008, when the inflation index was higher than it is now. Businesses are facing an increase of 5 per cent. in rates when international price index—IPI—inflation is down to 0.1 per cent. and we are likely to experience deflation in the coming year. Businesses still have to meet the inflationary increase, which is based on thoroughly out-of-date figures.
	That will make it hard for many small businesses to survive, yet, to revert to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) made, the Government have made no suggestions about the methodology, which could be changed and improved. Indeed, we hear the contrary from the Secretary of State, who has not graced us with her presence today. I am sorry that she is not here, because it is always a pleasure to see her and look her straight in the eye, as perhaps I can— [Laughter.] If one has a unique selling point, one should not be afraid to flaunt it.
	When taxed with the difficulties that businesses would experience, the Secretary of State's response was,
	"it is essential to try to maximise the take from non-domestic rates".—[ Official Report, 20 January 2009; Vol. 486, c.608.]
	That gives it all away. The survival of businesses and the viability of local services are not the Government's concern, but using businesses as a cash cow is. Businesses are being clobbered by the increase in non-domestic rates to bail out the Government's waste. Among other things, business rates are being used to subsidise the pointless VAT cut. On what would most people prefer public money to be spent? The Secretary of State's comment gives away the Government's position.
	Businesses are suffering from the further complication this year of the end of transitional relief from the previous 2005 revaluation. It is likely that that will raise another £100 million, taken away from businesses that are already in difficulty. People therefore face a genuine double whammy. Again the Government have done nothing—not even expressed a hint of concern—about the impact of the cliff edge on which many businesses are perched.

Bob Neill: It is never too late to follow good practice, and I hope that all local authorities will. It really is as simple as that.
	I have been talking about the small business sector, which suffers particular difficulties, but relief on empty properties is another important issue. The reduction in the relief available has caused difficulties in many sectors. We could understand the concern if it were thought that properties were being deliberately left empty, but that is not the case. The difficulty that the economic downturn creates is that, invariably and inevitably in these economic circumstances, the void period that arises between one letting finishing—sometimes, I regret to say, because the business previously in the premises has ceased trading—and another business taking over is likely to be longer, because there is less demand. To clobber the owners at that stage seems unjust and is, I think, an unforeseen consequence of the Government's approach. That could be rectified, however.
	There is concern about the growth in the number of empty shops on the high street. Again, the LGA has been doing its best. Only two or three weeks ago, it announced an initiative on good practice that can be rolled out to try to encourage other means of at least getting vacant units in use, having something in shop windows and having some activity, rather than the whitewashed windows that we see all too often. Again, that is an area where there has been a failure to support business.
	Another sector experiencing difficulty is the ports, which are important. The Minister for Local Government and I have talked about the ports on a number of occasions in recent times, and I am sorry that his eyes look as if they might glaze over, but I make no apology for returning to the subject because the treatment of those businesses is shameful. Also, I make no apology for saying to him that until he and his colleagues wake up and take notice of what is happening in the ports, we will return to these matters again and again.
	A thoroughly needless step has been embarked on: a retrospective revaluation of port tax, which is driving firms in the ports out of business and threatening the viability of a key sector of the British economy. This all stems from the inadequacy of a Government agency. I know that the Minister has spoken to operators and businesses in the ports, as have I and a number of hon. Members. The message from the ports sector, which I have received very clearly, is that everybody accepts the need to pay a fair share in rates. There is no problem with rationalisation of the previous system—the cumulo—by which rates were paid.
	For those Members who have not followed the issue, previously businesses within the 55 registered ports in effect paid their rates via the operator; some were paid over in total by the operator. A decision was taken that led to their being rated as separate hereditaments—separate rateable units. So far, all well and good, but the incompetence and delay shown by the Valuation Office Agency in drawing up new lists meant that those lists were not available until this year.
	As I recall, that is a number of years on from when the lists should have been made available. The consequence has been a massive retrospective increase in the cost of rates, backdated to 2005, when the lists should have been brought into being. The inadequacy and bad management of the VOA meant that firms were not asked to fork out for those changed rates until this year—three years after the event.

Bob Neill: I am aware of that as it has been raised by my hon. Friend and a number of Members who sit on the Labour Benches, as well as by Members from all other parties. It is not a purely partisan matter, so it is all the more surprising that we have met with such a stonewalling response from the Department for Communities and Local Government.
	It is worth examining these matters in a little more detail, because they clearly show the inadequacy of the Government's approach. Overall, there will be a very significant increase in the burden that the ports sector will have to bear. Not only is it retrospective, but it follows an increase that was imposed with no impact assessment, no consultation and no assessment of the effect on the wider economy. Moreover, the policy contravenes the Treasury's own guidance on retrospective taxation. That information does not come from me; all of it was obtained by hon. Members in answers to questions that they had asked the Government. The Government have breached their own rules.
	Against that background, it is particularly invidious to use retrospective taxation. There are clear parameters for the use of retrospective taxation: it should be used very rarely, to preserve revenue and other significant interests. As there was never any assessment of the amount of revenue that might be raised, no one knew what there was to preserve. We have had enough stealth taxes from this Government in the past; now we have a backdated stealth tax as well, and that makes their action doubly invidious.
	The Humber Docks Rating Group, which has met a number of Members in all parts of the House, estimates that some 600 businesses could be affected. Firms are already going under. Three have gone under so far, and, although they are small firms, I believe that between 60 and 100 jobs have been lost. A number of other businesses have reported that they are in difficulty—and this is not just affecting the small business sector; it is affecting large multinationals as well. At a recent meeting at the House of Commons, DFDS Seaways made it clear through its UK managing director that unless the treatment of the ports sector changed, it would have to reconsider its investment and operations in the United Kingdom.
	That underlines the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). This is an area in which the United Kingdom's competitiveness is at stake. Organisations such as DFDS Seaways will simply relocate their operations in Europe—in Rotterdam—and, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the transhipments will then come by road, which will have bad consequences for the environment. This is the worst example that one could possibly imagine of the Government's lack of a joined-up policy.

Bob Neill: I know the Minister has his back to the wall, but, if I may say so, he really is struggling a bit. It is not, I hope, normal practice in the valuation business for changes to be carried out retrospectively without impact assessments and without consultation. If it is, that says a lot about those ultimately responsible for the VOA—and the ultimate responsibility lies, of course, with Ministers.
	What is special about the ports sector is that it is particularly vulnerable to this measure, and firms are starting to go out of business. Nothing the Government can say will get them off the hook on this, and I regret that the Minister is, perhaps on orders from above, still digging himself into this position. That follows on from the response of the Department to the House of Lords debate last week, where the Government position was condemned by their Lordships, and the next day the Government issued a statement saying, "Nothing has changed, and we carry on as before." This Government are turning into a modern-day version of the Bourbons, as that is an attitude we could have expected from Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in Versailles. The only difference is that the Government are saying, "You can have eight years to eat the cake," but what they do not understand is that the cake will choke the businesses in the interim. That is why this is wrong. The Government have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
	If we add all these things together, we are left with a catalogue of failure. I have referred to supplementary business rates, but there is also the winding down of the local authority business growth incentives—LABGI—scheme. There have been wholly inadequate responses from the Government.

Bob Neill: I do not want the hon. Gentleman to get self stuck in the position he is currently in, as he might hurt himself. I have given a very clear answer. I am more than happy to encourage all local authorities to work seriously together, and I hope they will, but there is no point in masking where the real responsibility lies here: the Government have emasculated a scheme that could otherwise have worked well, and then sought to ignore what my party were trying to put in its place.

Julian Brazier: What would the Minister say to Ahlmark Shipping (UK) Ltd, which contacted me this morning to say that it had received a backdated rate demand for three quarters of a million pounds? Nobody from the Valuation Office Agency, or indeed anyone else, approached the company about this new system of paying direct rates—it already had a negotiated cumulo contract with its port supplier. The first that the company heard about this was in March 2008. It now faces a bill for the sum that I mentioned and it says that it has no chance of recovering those costs from its customers. It states that this
	"will make our company insolvent with job losses inevitable."

John Healey: I would say that if the business is faced with such a business tax demand, it should have been paying business taxes a good deal earlier than 2005. I would also say that businesses in the same port—possibly ones in direct competition with the one that the hon. Gentleman mentions—have been paying business taxes on their own account during that period. Finally, I would say that the Opposition should not vote down the measures that we will seek to put in place next week that will give that firm and others in a similar position eight years to pay the backdated business rates that they are now legally liable to pay.

"The VAT cut appears to have had a clear positive impact."

Richard Shepherd: The problem is clearly focused in small businesses, and many of my hon. Friends are very concerned about that, but it is also much wider on the high street. Some big chains are in marginal trading positions now, and they are big sources of employment. The Government will lose revenue and costs—through social security—will rise. Would it not be better to stabilise the situation by retaining the situation as it was before all these proposals started to increase the burden on employment?

John Healey: The LABGI scheme—to use a rather ugly and awkward acronym—was a three-year scheme from the outset. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is very misleading to the House when he says that the amount for the scheme has been slashed— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The word "misleading" is not a word that we like to use in the Chamber. Perhaps the Minister would care to withdraw it.

John Healey: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not wish to accuse the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst of misleading the House, so of course I withdraw that word. However, he is mistaken if he describes it as a scheme that has had its funding from the Treasury slashed. I say that because I was the Treasury Minister responsible for introducing it. I devised and funded it as a three-year scheme: over the three years, almost £1 billion has been made available as a reward to local authorities that played a part in helping businesses in their area to grow.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) makes a really important point. The money is a reward and a recognition, yes, but it is also an encouragement and an incentive to local authorities to do more to support their business base, and to bring jobs and long-term prosperity to their local economy. That is the sort of investment and activity that we wish to encourage local authorities to do more of, but the Government—and especially my Department—have a principle to which we hold quite strongly. That is that we believe that, where possible, we should allow local authorities to take decisions for themselves about how best to spend their money and about what is best for their area.

John Healey: I can understand the reaction of business people in Bassetlaw. If what my hon. Friend says about his council's use of the money is correct, that places it out of step with the mainstream of councils that receive LAGBI money. Most councils see the reason for the money and understand its value, and they have been able to use it to support local jobs and businesses, particularly during this difficult time when the economy is on a downturn and businesses are under new pressure.
	We are conscious of the pressures on business at present, and of the pressures that business rates can produce, but I remind the House that rating systems of one type or another have been in place in this country for more than 400 years. The present system is central to providing the revenues that support those local government services—such as education, housing, waste, social services and planning—that benefit us all.
	This year, business rates should raise around £20 billion—all of which, I point out to the hon. Member for Wealden (Mr. Hendry), is redistributed back to local authorities, rather than going into central coffers or the tax pool.

Mark Todd: While my right hon. Friend is right in saying that this taxation system is not particularly new, what is relatively new is the early imposition of business rates on empty property, following the Barker review. In times such as these, no sane property owner will needlessly hold on to empty property, so although the focused support for smaller businesses is welcome, will my right hon. Friend review the level at which that assistance comes into place? In my area, companies are struggling to let properties while desperately trying to meet business rate demands they cannot cover.

John Healey: I can confirm that we are considering the appropriate methodology at the moment. I can further confirm that we aim to publish the proposals for consultation later this summer. I look forward to debating them, and to hearing the hon. Gentleman's representations on them.
	Let me move on briefly. I said earlier that we were very conscious of the economic pressures on business at present—the pressures that the international credit crunch and the economic slowdown are having. That is why, contrary to the argument that we heard earlier, there are a range of practical measures in place that are offering real help to businesses, particularly to small firms, in the face of not just a credit crunch, but a crunch of confidence, demand and, increasingly, jobs. Not to act, as independent commentators and some of the specialists have said, is likely in the long run to cost us more than the action that we are taking.
	To help cash-flow pressures from business taxes, those measures include putting in place a mechanism for deferring tax payments. Since it was announced in the pre-Budget report, HMRC has done so for 93,000 businesses at a value of £1.6 billion. The measures include help to secure finance for small and medium-sized enterprises through the Government enterprise finance guarantee. That enables banks to provide an initial £1.3 billion of lending to SMEs that have viable business plans but find that their normal commercial sources of support may have been choked off in the current circumstances. So far 26 lenders have signed up to the scheme and 20 of those lenders have already made offers; 1,300 businesses have been registered as eligible for support, and support to date totals almost £150 million.

Lorely Burt: Yes, he did, but that was some little time ago; I doubt if he would get one today.
	In their amendment, the Government cite no fewer than 12 initiatives that they purport to have introduced to help business. Some of those are most welcome. The HMRC scheme allowing deferral of tax payments is welcome. The local authority business growth incentive scheme was welcome, if overly complex to administer, but I understand that its funding has now dropped to £150 million. Why, at a time of crisis, have the Government reduced the ability of local authorities to extend help to local businesses in their area? Perhaps the Minister could comment on that in the wind-ups.
	The amendment mentions the aim of paying Government suppliers within 10 days. I understand that the practicalities of that are causing difficulties, because 10 days is something of a random number, and implementation even of the aspiration seems to be pretty random. If all taxpayer-funded suppliers were paid even within 30 days, that would be a huge improvement for many companies who are having to wait months for payment on Government contracts. The amendment refers to free business health checks. The Minister said that 130,000 have already been carried out, but I would be interested to know what percentage of businesses know about the checks, especially those in the smallest business categories.
	This blizzard of Government initiatives sounds great, but are they achieving any real penetration? Are we just skating about on the surface of an iceberg whose depth we do not know?

Anne Milton: Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister said nothing that will help the 272 businesses in my constituency which, at the end of transitional relief, face increases of between 5 and 1,000 per cent.? There is no way that some of those businesses will be able to withstand those sorts of bills.

Lorely Burt: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. We have been tantalised with a suggestion from the Minister that some form of transitional relief system will be introduced for businesses that will have large increases. I look forward to hearing a little more detail on how that might operate.
	Then there are the big initiatives mentioned in the Government amendment. The £20 billion working capital scheme sounds fantastic, but the wheels are turning too slowly and the money is not getting through. Giving an instruction is not like waving a magic wand. Our beloved Chancellor is not Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise—he cannot just say, "Make it so," and have the crew comply with miraculous speed. We are not in warp drive; we are not even moving in the right direction. In reality, the Chancellor is more like the captain of the Titanic. There is the iceberg—the ship is moving inexorably towards it. He has given the order to change course, but the crew will not turn the ship around fast enough. In fact, the crew are not obeying orders at all. The captain has failed to supervise them properly, and they have become dissolute in their ways. They need taking in hand by a stronger, more far-sighted captain—one who saw that iceberg looming years ago. He is a captain who would take firm control, nationalise the banks, which are already in majority public ownership, and steer the ship back on the course of prosperity. I refer of course to the cultured, erudite Captain Picard of the Liberal Democrats, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable).
	Well, I could go on, but to return to earth for a moment, we should consider another benefit mentioned in the Government amendment, which is the extension of empty property rate relief for businesses with a rateable value of £15,000 or less. I wonder what sort of small business in London would benefit from that empty property rate relief—a purveyor of broom cupboards perhaps, or a car park space owner. The CBI has calculated that at least 5 million sq ft of property has been demolished already to avoid that tax, which is an absolute scandal for business and for the environment. I ask the Minister if we can please see in the Budget an extension of the upper limit on empty property rate relief, at least, which would be sensible.

Peter Luff: You can get a better class of metaphor in Grimsby than you can in Solihull, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), but I am not sure that Ministers appreciated the metaphors that were directed at them. If I am right, they were not meant personally.
	I had hoped to talk a little about the local situation in Evesham and Droitwich in my constituency in order to illustrate the broader national points, but time is against me and I approve of the reduced limit so that others can enter the debate. Let me just say, then, that business rates are surprisingly important to business. We must not lose sight of that.
	The Forum of Private Business did a survey this month of 6,000 small firms. When asked what were the most important issues facing them, 65 per cent. of respondents said that it was restoring business confidence. The second most important issue, mentioned by 63 per cent., was restoring consumer confidence. The third, at 59 per cent., was business rates. What rather surprised me was that access to finance and the cost of finance came in 11th and 12th respectively at only 35 per cent. and 29 per cent. Clearly, we are not discussing a side issue in the economy; we are talking about a central issue for small and medium-sized businesses in particular.
	This issue is particularly important for one simple reason of which we must not lose sight: business rates have to be paid in full and on time irrespective of the state of one's business. They cannot be cut or negotiated; the rates are a given. It may be possible to negotiate over staff and rents, or perhaps with suppliers about long-term credit. There are all sorts of things that can be done—cutting electricity bills by using less electricity, for another example—but the rates bill is a given, and it was the third largest cost, as well as the third highest priority, after staff and rents for those businesses.
	Three weeks ago at Prime Minister's questions, the Leader of the House, standing in for the Prime Minister, said:
	"Opposition Members have a choice: they can either say to their constituents that there is no help and that nothing can be done, and wring their hands, or they can work to support businesses and bring schemes forward."—[ Official Report, 4 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 845.]
	I have to say that I was rather disappointed by the remarks that the Minister for Local Government made in his opening speech, as he seemed to echo the idea that Conservative Members are suggesting nothing. I was sorry, too, to hear the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), say the same thing. It is just not true.
	We have suggested a list of initiatives and the most powerful of those is the national loan guarantee scheme. If it had been embraced by the Government—we suggested it in November—business would be in a much better situation. The Government have brought forward partial schemes, one of which, the working capital scheme, is still not even in place, but we have suggested reform of the financial services sector, action on council tax and action on savers—a raft of specific, well-targeted measures that would make things better. I reject absolutely the suggestion made by the Minister, who has fallen below his usual high standards in repeating that old canard.
	For my part, I have tried to do something on small business rate relief with my automatic payment Bill, which was debated in the House on 6 March. I have been in constructive discussions with the Minister and his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan). I withdrew the Bill at their request because negotiations seemed to be going on elsewhere in the Government. I hope that we hear in the Budget that action will be taken on this measure, because it could make a big difference for many small businesses. I emphasise that the Bill involved only a 50 per cent. discount for companies with small rateable values and small numbers of properties, but it would give them what the law entitles them to. Half of eligible businesses are not claiming what they are entitled to, which I think is wrong.
	My Select Committee, as part of its inquiry on post offices, recently went to Wales to see the work that the Welsh Assembly Government are doing. It sticks in my throat a little to say it, but the work that they are doing in this respect is excellent, not only in automatic rate relief for all small businesses within a slightly less generous scheme, but in 100 per cent. rate relief for all small post offices. That is an excellent idea, because those small post offices are some of the most vulnerable and most important businesses in deprived urban and rural communities. That is another suggestion that we should consider embracing in England. Those small sums of money could make all the difference. So often in the House we talk about billions and trillions, but hundreds of pounds can be the difference between survival and failure for so many of the smallest businesses in our land.
	My measure is supported by a bewildering array of organisations, including business organisations and, above all, the Local Government Association, which recognises the difficulty in getting all those small businesses to apply for the relief to which they are entitled. It wants them to get that relief, because it recognises that local authorities will have less work to do in picking up the pieces when companies go bust—doing the Government's dirty work for them, chasing business rate bills that are going unpaid. Local authorities believe that it is in the interest of their communities for the Bill's provisions to go into law and for rate relief to become automatic.
	Ministerial objections have been raised. Ministers say that it would be difficult for local authorities to implement the measure, but the local authorities do not agree. The risk of payment being made to ineligible people has been raised, but I have proposed measures that would deal with that comprehensively and effectively. Increased costs for larger businesses have been mentioned. I understand that, but such costs would be nugatory and what they were paying anyhow a couple of years ago. Small businesses, which are the most vulnerable businesses in our society, have a right to expect that from the bigger suppliers, which often do not treat small suppliers with the dignity, respect and commercial sense that they ought to.
	Bizarrely, the Minister offered the idea that not so many companies as we thought are not receiving the relief, but that is an argument for proceeding, because the cost would be cheaper. In the House of Lords last week, Baroness Andrews suggested that putting the measure in place would in some way prevent the Government from doing other things to help small businesses. I really do not understand the logic of that argument and would love to have a private chat with the Minister about what she meant.
	The sum of all small things is a big thing. I am suggesting a small thing, but business rates are a big thing for businesses. The opportunity to deal more broadly with the issue was squandered with the VAT reduction. Forget the arguments about the merits of a fiscal stimulus. That £12.5 billion could have been used so much better to address this problem, protect jobs and protect businesses. We now know that 98 per cent. of Federation of Small Businesses members and 83 per cent. of Forum of Private Business members say that the VAT cut has had no beneficial impact whatever on them.

David Kidney: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). I am only sorry that I was not here on the Friday when his private Member's Bill was debated. He put forward an excellent idea, about which I shall say more in a moment.
	Today's debate had not been proceeding for long before the first hon. Member mentioned that today was a quarter day. Businesses large and small in high streets up and down the country are being asked for three months' rent, which for some is the last straw that will break the camel's back. It was reassuring to hear the trade body for British property managers say today that it recommends its members to do all that they can to help people to pay their rent, which includes accepting payments monthly even if they are legally entitled to payment for the full three months. I hope that we shall all watch property managers assiduously to ensure that they are being as reasonable as they can be to businesses that might otherwise be struggling. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) pointed out, if that does not happen we shall see more and more gaps opening up in our high streets, which would be very damaging to local businesses as a whole.
	Last Friday, when I met members of my local chamber of commerce for one of our regular discussions, the issues that they raised with me were the continuing difficulty of obtaining credit from banks and a reasonable performance by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, in most cases, in allowing time for taxes to be paid. They also made a point that has been made today about prompt payment of bills. They said, "If only people would adhere to the terms and conditions and pay within 30 days as they are supposed to, that would benefit us greatly." They drew attention to the huge purchasing power of the public sector in procurement contracts, and pointed out that much more could be done locally in terms of goods and services, food, and printing and advertising. Stafford contains the local councils' administrative headquarters, a prison, a university, a police headquarters and several hospitals. All those are huge players in their procurement power.
	Of course the members of the chamber of commerce mentioned rates. They were still very annoyed about the business rates on empty properties. I was nervous, even in a rising market, about the implications of those. I saw the argument—in a rising market—in favour of trying to put pressure on people not to leave properties standing empty, but to reduce their rents if necessary in order to obtain tenants. It was a reasonable argument in a rising market, but the market in property prices has now collapsed. The least that the Government can do is provide what they have announced so far—a temporary relief that will benefit around 70 per cent. of properties—but my first Budget representation in this debate is that we need to go further. I think that we should preferably provide a complete temporary relaxation of the tax, but, if we cannot do that, we should certainly do something that will benefit more than 70 per cent.
	I appreciate how difficult the Government's finances will be when it comes to the Budget. If anyone was in any doubt about that, their doubts will have been dispelled by the Governor of the Bank of England yesterday. However, this is an important issue, which is why I have made my representation.

William Cash: I, too, have been having meetings with the Stafford chamber of commerce, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware. We had a very good meeting today with the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the hon. Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson), and with other Members of Parliament, regarding many of the questions that have been raised. Will the hon. Gentleman go so far as to endorse our motion, or will he vote with the Government?

David Kidney: Well, the hon. Gentleman can see how I vote later on. As a Labour MP, I support the Labour Government, but I am making my views about what I think should be done in next month's Budget very clear.
	The small business rate relief is a benefit for many small businesses. Sadly, however, not enough of them even know that it exists, or how to apply for it. A lot has been done to notify people that they can claim and to make it easy to claim, but many still do not do so. That is why the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire was a good measure, and my second Budget representation today is that that relief should be automatic. Beyond that, local authorities have a discretion to grant business rate relief in any other circumstances where there is hardship or another statutory provision allows them to do so. Some of the cost of giving the relief falls on the local council, which makes it difficult for it to give that relief, and the rest falls on the business rates pool generally.
	I think local authorities should by now have in place their strategies for responding to this crisis of the business recession and difficulties in keeping people's jobs going, and they ought to have a strategy for giving relief where they possibly can. In my area—Stafford and Staffordshire—we recently benefited from the release by the Government of the last of the LABGI money. I am grateful to the Government for releasing that money. In Stafford and Staffordshire together, it amounted to more than £1 million extra. I have made my representations to the two local authorities that there is a pot of money, which they had not been expecting when they set their budgets, that can be used as part of a strategy for helping businesses that are asking them for help. So there is a possibility that help can be given.
	I know that we are under time pressure in this debate, but I just want to mention that the LABGI scheme in my constituency has been extremely beneficial for all three years. Every year Stafford has performed well in new businesses starting up and then the council's benefiting from LABGI. We are one of the best performers in the whole region in gaining that money. As the west midlands has a lower than national average gross value added—GVA—such an initiative to help councils to help businesses to start up is very beneficial. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government is aware of that, because he was in Stafford last week, but I wish to point out that the local county council froze the rents on its enterprise units this year, again to try to help small businesses through the recession.
	A big procurement contract that is possible all over the country right now is Building Schools for the Future. It has come to Staffordshire, and anything that the Minister can do, along with his colleagues in the other Department that is responsible for that project, to make sure that contracts are let in ways that enable local businesses to benefit as much as possible from them, will be very beneficial. In Stafford town centre currently, the county council has a project at Tipping street for a complete new building for the council and local retail units. Given all the construction workers in my constituency who have come to see me because they are out of work, that is clearly very valuable.
	My final point is that the number of people going through the door of the jobcentre in Stafford has doubled in a year. This is a time of great pressure on the staff who work there, and they are doing a tremendously good job. Whenever a job cannot be found for someone, there is always pressure for training, training, training. Any initiative to get people into training is very valuable. I noticed one this week from universities called "Enrol for free" for people in receipt of jobseeker's allowance. That is a very useful tool, which I hope we will see more of in the coming weeks and months.

Andrew Selous: I shall be brief because I know that time is short. I represent an area where, sadly, the unemployment figure is considerably higher than it was when my party left office in 1997, there are many empty premises and, throughout the constituency, only 160 job vacancies are advertised through Jobcentre Plus. The issues that we are discussing are crucial because the one thing I do not want to see is that unemployment total going even higher, and I fear that unless we do something about business rates, among other issues, it will do so.
	I make no apology for running through some specific concerns about business rates that have been raised with me directly by local businesses. One small business woman came to me not long ago concerned about how the valuation office had come to her shop and done a quick zap with a laser gun; although the people had been there for only a couple of minutes, a few days later she got a bill for an extra £900. She complained to me that no account had been taken of local conditions.
	A business man whose business is close to that lady's said—I raised this with the Minister earlier—that his business is paying the same amount as is being paid on a much larger building opposite. A firm has offered to challenge that situation, but it will take £800 to do so. The Minister has said that a procedure involving tribunals is available, but it is complicated and it costs money; it is a bit like saying that a judicial review is open to everyone—it is not if it costs money. There are thus some issues to address regarding fairness.
	Someone from a small engineering business has complained that her business is not eligible for the small business rate relief because it was registered only in June or July, and was not on the register on 1 April. I would like some of the £12.4 billion that the Government have wasted on their VAT cut to be put towards helping businesses that just missed the deadline by a couple of days, because that would have been more helpful. I would also like some of that VAT money to have helped another business, which told me that its rateable value was £15,500. That is £500 over the limit and thus the business is not eligible for any small business rate relief. I would have used some of the £12.4 billion to introduce a taper and help businesses that find themselves just over that limit. The couple involved have worked hard setting up this business, they employ people locally and they fear that the business will not be around much longer.
	The Government are always telling us about the initiatives that they have introduced for business, but I wish to read out a quote from a local business person in my constituency, who said that she had contacted the valuation office. She stated:
	"I am not going to hold my breath as we have had so many government leaflets, brochures and advertisements about how to save your livelihood during this credit crunch but to be truthful not a lot of practical help is available and the money spent on all that paper work and people"
	could be better used. Those are not my words; they are the verdict of a local business woman on what the Government have done. Something on business rates would be practical, it would help cash flow and it would be much more use.
	The central point I wish to make to the Minister is that I do not think he or the Government have grasped the fact that many of these small businesses will not be around to pay business rates in future unless we do something now. We all understand the arguments for a sustainable tax take to pay for decent public services in the years to come, but unless we do something now the base of businesses that there will be to pay business rates in the future will be severely diminished. Something needs to be done urgently—even if the relief is only for a year or two—and I would have used some of that £12.4 billion that the Government wasted on that VAT cut. They did that when we already had discounts of 70 per cent. or so in our shops and businesses, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) pointed out to the Prime Minister and others very eloquently.
	Of course, I back the automatic small business rate relief and, as an Englishman, I find it preposterous that it is available in Wales but not to businesses in my constituency or throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Let us have a bit of equity. I would like to know how the Welsh got this without our getting it, as would some of my local small businesses.
	My party has very practical proposals to ensure that local councils could keep any increase in business rates over and above what they were expecting to receive for a six-year period. That would give local councils an incentive to get more businesses into their area—there has not been enough incentive, and not enough of our local councils are hungry to attract extra businesses to their area. That proposal is a thoroughly good one, as is our proposal to allow councils to provide discounts on business rates, provided they could make up the income foregone or reduce costs in other areas. Those are practical measures; they are local solutions for local areas, and that is entirely sensible. Of course, these go alongside the proposals that we have made for a national loan guarantee scheme, cuts in corporation tax for small businesses, cutting the national insurance contributions for some of the smallest businesses, and deferring VAT bills.
	I have to express my own reservations, echoed by a business man in my constituency to whom I talked last week, about the loading of taxes on empty premises. What is the point of destroying our stock of business premises? It is the seedcorn for future jobs and that has not been a good move.

Mark Prisk: This debate has been short, but timely. It has shown that the Government's policies on business rates are causing real harm.
	We began with an excellent contribution, as one would expect, from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who brought to bear his characteristic charm and tremendous experience in the field. I thought that he exposed very neatly the weaknesses in the arguments over ports, and in the other issues raised by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
	We then had a characteristically generous contribution from the Minister for Local Government. I confess that I have soft spot for him, as we spent more hours than I care to remember in Committee Room 10 debating the Finance Bill. He has always been what he was today—the defender of the indefensible—and he was on particularly good form this afternoon. I noticed that he struggled a bit when the googly came from his own side, in this case from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), but he did do one very important thing: he put it on the record, I believe for the first time, that the Government are committed to reducing the poundage and therefore the burden of business rates if the retail prices index is negative in September. We look forward to holding the Government to that commitment.
	We then had a contribution from the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that was literally from another planet. It was a fascinating run through "Star Trek" and, I think, "Titanic". I suspect that the ending was nearer that of the latter movie than the former and, being a gentleman of a certain age, I thought that the metaphor was perhaps a little stretched. However, the hon. Lady is often right about these matters, and she made a good point about there being a genuine cost to small businesses.
	The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) made a contribution, and then we had an excellent speech, as one would expect, from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). He was concise but thoughtful, and he set out the key arguments about why we need to look at making small business rate relief automatic.
	The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made an excellent contribution, and his remarks were intelligent and balanced. I was pleased to see that, like the Minister for Local Government, the hon. Gentleman indicated his support for making small business rate relief automatic. We look forward to them joining us in the Division Lobby, should the opportunity arise.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) made an excellent contribution and, as he often does, he highlighted the human cost of failed Government policies. He did that in an extremely powerful manner, and he quoted a constituent of his who said that the problem with the Government is that there is not a lot of "practical help", and who wondered why the money could not be used better.
	Finally, my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) both made strong and excellent contributions. Both have always fought the corner of small firms and, although my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South made a short speech, it was as effective as ever. I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury was listening to what my hon. Friends said, and that he will answer the points that were raised when he replies to the debate.
	As you know, Mr. Speaker, Ministers' press releases regularly claim that they are providing real help for businesses, yet the view of business is that it is all talk and no action. For example, the Government's amendment talks proudly of their flagship working capital scheme. It was announced eight weeks ago as the centrepiece of Government proposals, and it was meant to provide £20 billion of loan guarantees from 1 March. However, it is nearly 1 April now, and not a single company has benefited financially from the scheme.
	Or what about the automotive assistance package? Promised in November and launched in January, it was valued at £2.3 billion and we were told that it would provide "real help" to the car industry. What has happened? How much of that money has reached businesses? Well, according to the answer from the Minister and despite all the talk, not a single loan guarantee has been issued yet.
	Since the fall of Lehman Brothers last September, it has been clear to everyone that urgent action is needed, both in the banking system and also to deliver working capital to the rest of the economy. That is why Conservatives set out a plan last November for a single, national loan guarantee scheme that would help viable businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. It would be simple, easy to access and of course easy to understand. As several Members pointed out, had Ministers taken our advice then the scheme would now be up and running, helping businesses through the recession.
	Despite Ministers' protestations that somehow the Opposition have nothing else to offer, the truth is that we have proposed a number of schemes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire rightly pointed out. Payroll taxes for the smallest employers should be cut by 1 per cent. Small company corporation tax rates should return to 20p in the pound.
	As we have heard from many Members, rising business rates are causing real problems. When I meet businesses, as I am sure other Members do, one of the critical questions that is always raised, especially in small businesses, is about rates. The reasons are simple. First, firms pay out thousands of pounds in bills but they receive nothing directly in return. The hon. Member for Solihull was right to make that point.
	Secondly, business rates are a fixed overhead. They remain the same in the good years and the bad, so when the economy shrinks business rates hurt all the more. That is why we believe that the Government's rates policies cause serious damage. After all, what is the sense of imposing £1 billion of extra business rates on empty property just as we head into a recession? Why compound the problem with up to £600 million in supplementary rates? It just adds insult to injury.
	We heard a powerful contribution from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby about how the Government's policies on ports damage those enterprises. Without consultation or proper economic assessment—as the Minister admitted—the Valuation Office Agency issued new bills to each separate occupier. Those bills are retrospective and reach right back to 2005. As we have heard, the result could be ruinous for port businesses across the country; from London to Liverpool, from the Humber—it was nice that one of its representatives, the former Deputy Prime Minister, could join us, albeit momentarily—to other ports such as Falmouth in Cornwall.

Ian Pearson: Today's debate demonstrates the strength of feeling among all Members of the House on the subject of the importance of small businesses to the UK economy. We know that small businesses employ more people than any other kind of businesses in the private sector, and that there are a record 4.7 million small businesses in the country today. The UK business environment is recognised as being among the best in the world.
	Given the limited time that I have to respond to the debate, it is clear that I must focus on some of the major issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) spoke exclusively about rates in ports. Rather than responding in detail now, I refer him to the fact that there will be a debate on the Floor of the House next Wednesday on the regulations that the Government propose to introduce, so he will have the opportunity to debate them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made an important speech. I very much take his point about the need for property managers to act reasonably at this time. He is also right to emphasise the procurement powers of local authorities. As my hon. Friend knows, the Minister for Local Government visited Staffordshire recently. We certainly welcome the freezing of rates for business centres across the county, to which he referred. That is a great example of a Labour-led county council taking effective action. I note the Budget representations that he made to me on empty property relief and on small business rate relief. Obviously, the Budget will be announced next month.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) raised a number of local examples of businesses in his constituency and variations in valuation practices, which I am sure he will take up through other channels.
	The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), a black country neighbour of mine, will no doubt welcome the fact that 7,340 companies in the west midlands have so far deferred taxes, to the tune of £134 million. I agree with him about the importance of retail to the economy of the west midlands and of the UK as a whole, and in many cases I do not think the importance of retail to regeneration has been properly emphasised. He talked about the recession of the early 1980s, which I remember well. I also remember the extremely limited policy response at that time, by contrast with the active measures that the present Government have introduced.
	The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) did not have the opportunity to do much more than clear his throat, but I am sure we will benefit from his wisdom on another occasion.
	In the remaining time available, I want to cover the Government's response. First, I shall address the subject of the VAT cut, which was raised by a number of hon. Members. There is clear evidence that that cut has been passed on through reductions in prices, and it is transparently the case that it is a £12.4 billion boost to the economy. Opposition Members say that they would not have introduced the VAT cut, they would have done something else. They need to think about whether they are prepared to support a fiscal stimulus to the UK economy. They have opposed us on that all along the road, but they cannot spend money if they are not prepared to commit the resources.
	That is exactly the case with the Conservative proposals in relation to the loan guarantee scheme, which was raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). The Conservative party is split on that. The shadow Chancellor says that he wants a loan guarantee scheme and pretends that it will not cost any money. The shadow Business Secretary says clearly that the taxpayer will take some of the hit. Whether on the loan guarantee scheme or on inheritance tax, there is clearly a difference of opinion at the heart of the Conservative party.
	Let me move on and explain the Government's enterprise finance guarantee. Hon. Members should be realistic about Government programmes. The enterprise finance guarantee is up and running and is providing support to businesses. The actions that the Government have taken to stimulate extra lending into the economy have, through the asset protection scheme commitments made by Lloyds Banking Group and by RBS, led to an additional £27 billion being introduced into the economy and made available for loans over the next 12 months.
	Under the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, about £30 million was offered to business last week. That is real progress. On the working capital scheme, a Government guarantee that supports £500 million more lending cannot be rustled up overnight. It requires extensive negotiations with the banks because it involves, potentially, taxpayers' guarantees that may be called. If the Opposition are serious, they should consider where the money will come from. They should recognise that such schemes take time and need to be negotiated. They must be right if the taxpayer is not to be exposed to completely unfair liabilities—

Council Housing (London Borough of Sutton)

Beverley Hughes: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing tonight's debate. Also, more fundamentally, I commend the leadership he has shown on the issues—not just teenage pregnancy, but early intervention and prevention, reducing inequality and poverty, and leadership of the local strategic partnership. His work on teenage pregnancy falls under that broader umbrella. The lead that he has shown is very important to his city.
	As my hon. Friend said, teenage pregnancy can have serious impacts not only on individuals but on families and communities, for generations. It is both a cause and a consequence of social exclusion and health inequalities, while all too often markedly reducing the life chances of the young people involved and the children whom they produce. That is why the Government are absolutely committed to reducing the number of conceptions among those aged under 18.
	As my hon. Friend knows, I visited Nottingham again very recently to observe the work being done by the youth sector. I was delighted to learn not only that the local authority has included teenage pregnancy in its key priorities under the local area agreements, but that my hon. Friend has committed himself to the important task of chairing the city's teenage pregnancy taskforce for the next few years. As he said, Nottingham saw a 6.1 per cent. reduction in teenage pregnancy rates between 2006 and 2007. That is extremely encouraging, but he recognises, as he graphically explained—as I do—that there is more to be done if it is to be turned into a consistent, long-term trend in the city. His taskforce will play a key role in that. It is vital for a senior team to be in place to drive such a strategy forward. I was also pleased to hear that the taskforce would encourage all local secondary schools to agree on a common life skills programme for 11 to 16-year-olds.
	My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the excellent work already being done by local authority staff, schools, doctors, nurses, people in the voluntary sector and many others. Further promising initiatives in Nottingham include nurse-led outreach projects, a condom distribution scheme, and the sex and relationship education that is taking place in many of the city's schools. I was glad to learn that all that good work was being underscored by additional support from the Department's national support team, which I hope will provide extra impetus.
	The recent drop in Nottingham's teenage pregnancy rates shows that, given those projects and the support that is being provided, the problem, although difficult, is not intractable and we should not give up on it. I know that my hon. Friend does not propose to do so. It is clear that when teenage pregnancy strategies are applied rigorously and robustly, with strong leadership such as that provided by my hon. Friend, they work very well. For instance, since 1998 Newham's rate has been reduced by nearly 25 per cent., Oldham's by over 29 per cent., and Calderdale's by nearly 30 per cent.
	In Nottingham my hon. Friend is leading a rigorous and robust implementation of the national strategy on teenage pregnancy, which we want every local area to adopt. It is based on the very best international evidence, and includes key recommendations and pointers from other countries. First, it emphasises the need for strong senior champions. My hon. Friend's development of the strategy has taken it a step further. I should like to pursue the requirement of naming individuals to be accountable for various elements, because I am sure that it will drive developments even faster and further.
	Secondly, the strategy recommends a well publicised contraceptive and sexual health service for young people which can reach the most vulnerable, who may be apprehensive about visiting such services. Thirdly, it recommends that a high priority should be given to sex and relationship education in schools, with real support from local authorities. Fourthly, it stresses the need to focus targeted interventions on the young people whose risk of teenage pregnancy is highest. As my hon. Friend said, those young people will be individuals if we can identify them, but otherwise they will be groups of young people. It should be emphasised that all these measures need to be applied to boys as well as girls. That has not been a strong element of the strategy in some areas.
	Clear messages should be conveyed to young people about the best ways of resisting peer pressure to have early sex, and about the need to delay sexual activity until they really understand and are ready for it. That, too, applies to boys as well as girls. We must also encourage them to use effective contraception and condoms when they do become sexually active. Fifthly, we must try to reach parents and support them in talking to their children about these issues, because young people say that ideally they would like to get the information and advice from their parents. Many say that their parents do not give it to them—that is particularly what boys tell us.
	Lastly, although it is important to focus on young people in their teenage years when they are sexually active, it is even more important both to consider the context of universal services, so that we provide opportunities for activity and for raising the aspirations of all young people, and to start decades earlier. That is why the Government spent such a lot of time and effort in developing services for younger children, starting with the early years—with Sure Start centres, extended schools, focusing on early intervention and prevention—and dramatically increasing support for parents so that good quality parenting is really possible.
	I want to say a few words about sex and relationship education—SRE—as it is clearly one of the key factors. We recognise that the quality of SRE across schools is still too patchy, which is why we have announced our intention to make SRE and personal, social and health education statutory. I hope that that will increase the priority schools give to teenage pregnancy and sexual health more generally, with a clear link to specialist health advice either on the school site or in the community. We expect to provide new guidance for schools on delivering SRE by January 2010.
	We know that the vast majority of parents—86 per cent.—want schools to provide good quality SRE for their children. Some people argue that if we give young people SRE, that encourages them to be sexually active. The opposite is shown to be the case, however. All our international evidence shows that SRE encourages young people to delay sex, while giving them the knowledge and skills they need to make informed choices, not only about sexual health, but about related issues such as alcohol, which can have a strong influence on the potential for unplanned pregnancies and unprotected sex.
	The role of parents is vital. We know that children who have open conversations with their parents are likely to have sex at a later age, and are more likely to take a more responsible approach and to use contraception when they do. However, many parents are not comfortable talking about these issues or do not feel that they are armed with the knowledge or confidence to do so. Almost half of our young people say they get little or no information from their parents, and that is particularly the case for boys. Therefore, we need sex education to support mothers and fathers in this aspect of education, but it should be a partnership between schools and parents, with parents leading on instilling values, and schools providing accurate information and opportunities for young people to develop their ability to make safe and healthy choices.
	I know that Nottingham has seen a very substantial recent reduction in teenage pregnancy, and that has helped to bring about a 7.2 per cent reduction between 1998, when the national strategy started, and 2007, although that is still below the average reduction in England of 10.7 per cent. It is important for us to develop our learning as Nottingham goes forward and implements the strategy through its taskforce, so that we can make further learning available for other local authorities in order to help them, too. Central to the success will be joint planning and commissioning between the local authority and the primary care trust. It was a key message in the recent child health strategy that those two bodies particularly must work together. My hon. Friend also mentioned some innovations in Nottingham in which I am interested, including the early intervention bond. I should be very interested to discuss with him how that concept develops.
	Not many people may be aware that, since records began 30-odd years ago, the UK has had a high rate of teenage pregnancy compared with other comparable countries, especially those in Europe. If one tracks the rate in the UK compared with that in other European countries, one finds that the issue started to be tackled in other European countries in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was not tackled here then. In addition, during that period we saw child poverty nearly treble and inequality and unemployment increase dramatically. At a time when other European countries were tackling this issue and their rates were decreasing, our rates remained at a historically high level.
	Since the national strategy was introduced there has been a 10.7 per cent. reduction in under-18 conception rates across the board. Later this year, we will be launching a high-profile media campaign, aimed at young people, on the effective use of contraception. None the less, the current rate is the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy that this country has had for the past 20 years, which clearly shows that, although we would like to go faster and further, we can have an impact on this problem. The teenage pregnancy strategy that we have in place is the right one to drive down the number of under-18 conceptions but, as my hon. Friend said, teenage pregnancy is still an issue of real concern.
	Although some teenage parents do well, the reality is that being a parent during adolescence makes life very tough. We also know that the children of young parents can often inherit the legacy of poor health, low expectations and wasted talents, and that teenage mothers are far more likely to suffer from post-natal depression. So by reducing teenage pregnancy rates and improving support for teenage parents, we have begun to break this cycle, to raise aspirations and to improve the life chances for many thousands of young people. We have now to make sure that that continues to happen in the years ahead, and I want to work with my hon. Friend, whom I commend once again for the incredible leadership that he has shown in his city, on taking forward this issue.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.